33 Facts About Theodore Zeldin

Theodore Zeldin was born on 22 August 1933 and is an Oxford scholar and thinker whose books have searched for answers to three questions.

Theodore Zeldin was born on the slopes of Mount Carmel on 22 August 1933, the son of Russian-Jewish parents who later chose to become naturalised British subjects.

Theodore Zeldin's father was a civil engineer, an expert in bridge-building, a colonel in the Russian Czarist Army and a socialist who rejected the Bolsheviks; his mother, the daughter of an industrialist, was a dentist who completed her training in Vienna.

Theodore Zeldin graduated from London University at the age of 17 in philosophy, history and Latin and then from Oxford University in modern history, with Firsts from both, followed by a doctorate at the newly established St Antony's College, Oxford.

Theodore Zeldin has been a fellow of St Antony's since 1957 ; he was its dean for thirteen years and played a leading role in developing it as the university's centre for international studies.

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Theodore Zeldin has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of the European Academy.

Theodore Zeldin has been decorated as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Commander of the Legion d'Honneur and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, and with Britain's top award for History, the Wolfson Prize.

Theodore Zeldin has been married to Deirdre Wilson, the co-inventor of Relevance Theory, since 1975; they live in an Art Deco house outside Oxford.

Theodore Zeldin gives his recreations as 'gardening, painting and mending things'.

Theodore Zeldin is the historian of human complexity, of the unpredictability of human interaction, and of the battles waging between muddled feelings inside every self, every family, every workplace.

Theodore Zeldin diverts attention away from legalistic regulations to the cunning subterfuges people use to bend or avoid them, and he does so with a humour which is most often gentle but sometimes ferocious.

Explanation, said one reviewer, was that Theodore Zeldin combined 'the interests of the novelist with the techniques of the historian… He is a modern Balzac, but one capable of supporting his assertions with statistics.

Theodore Zeldin completed his history with an investigation of the manners and preoccupations of contemporary French people.

Theodore Zeldin's conclusion is that there are as many minorities in France as there are inhabitants.

Whereas Tocqueville famously predicted that democracy would make people more and more alike, Theodore Zeldin discovers the opposite, that they become more different.

Theodore Zeldin argues that happiness is too easily converted into self-satisfaction and complacency, and he asks how people can claim to be happy when there is so much suffering and sorrow around them and when they have themselves experienced so little of life.

Theodore Zeldin explained his 'free history' as a rebellion against scholarship being condemned to use only classical forms of presentation, he was attempting to give history the freedom to do what abstract art had done to traditional representational art, to enlarge the range of discoveries it could make.

Theodore Zeldin describes how women have changed the way lovers speak, how families have attempted to avoid boredom or silence, how specialisation in work has made it difficult for people to understand one another's jargon, and what role there is for the tongue-tied and the shy.

Theodore Zeldin's starting point was that since most existing jobs and professions were invented long ago, their purpose was to fulfil hopes which were different from those of the present generation, for whom survival, status and skill are insufficient rewards.

Theodore Zeldin sees a billion young people, over the next few decades, searching not just for jobs, but for more interesting and exciting jobs, and being increasingly demanding as they become more educated and their curiosities range more widely.

Theodore Zeldin is evolving a new set of ambitions for business schools and new academic answers to the increasingly narrow specialisation that both work and education impose.

Theodore Zeldin was determined that gastronomy was as worthy of study in universities as any other of the pleasures of life.

Theodore Zeldin took his interest in experimental innovation further by starting a restaurant inside his college, run by a cordon bleu chef, to compete against the college's own more conventional food, and to attract fresh ideas from diners from outside the college.

Theodore Zeldin emphasises that the taste of food is only one part of gastronomy, quoting Brillat-Savarin who exalted not only the art of the kitchen but the art of the table and the conversation and conviviality it encouraged.

Books Theodore Zeldin published in his twenties can now be seen to have a significance that was not evident then.

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Theodore Zeldin has often been seen as the outsider who offers an alternative viewpoint.

Theodore Zeldin was an adviser to the French Millennium Celebrations Commission.

Theodore Zeldin became a member of the Consultative Committee on European Affairs of the French Government's Planning Commission, a member of the Scientific Committee of the Pole Universitaire Europeen de Lille, and of the Steering Committee of the Centre des Etudes Europeennes de Strasbourg.

Theodore Zeldin was president of the Maison du Temps et La Mobilite of Belfort, of the Scientific Committee that awarded the Mecenat Seita scholarships in the social sciences, and of the Festival International de Geographie.

Theodore Zeldin helped to draw up France's legislation as a member of the multi-party Commission formed by President Sarkozy, under the chairmanship of the socialist Jacques Attali.

Theodore Zeldin was a member of the Board of Visionaries, presided by the astronaut Claudie Haignere, advising Europe's largest Nanotechnology Laboratories on their future development.

Theodore Zeldin participated in debates organised by the French Senate, the National Assembly, various ministries, the national electricity company, the railway company, the Employers Union, the Young Company Directors, the National Federation of Small Businesses, the Federation of Private Employers, the major political parties, the National School of Public Health etc.

Theodore Zeldin has written for many newspapers, broadcast radio talks, and was a commentator on the live television broadcasts of national election results.